Which countries have you visited?
I stumbled over the site from a Dutch guy called Douwe Osinga, who now lives and works in Zurich for Google. He has published a couple of
really cool projects based on Google's API, and beyond.
Most "useful" to me is his project on
visited countries, where I can depict the countries which I have visited. What it does, it creates a bi-colored gif by calling
this URL with the parameter
?visited=CAUSSVGTMXNIARBRCLCOPEEGATBEDKFIFRDEHUISITNL
NOPTESSECHUKVAILTRAFKHCNINIDJPLAMYMMSGKRTWTHVNAUNZ
which is "just" a sequence of the two-letter Internet domain names of the countries that I have visited (CA = Canada, US = USA, and so on).
I will keep the result on the right margin of this blog and update it when I have visited new countries.
Oh, and I have visited 47 countries so far. You can see, that I am skewed towards Western Europe, the Americas and Asia. It's time to look into Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.
Christof's Running Season 2006 Opened
With the
Dolphin South End 10M Waterfront Run along the scenic (and flat) San Francisco Bay waterfront, I have opened my personal 2006 Running season.
I made the 10M in 80:24 minutes, which makes a pretty good 8min/M. and gave me rank #37 (out of 75 male runners)
Here are my plans for 2006 -3 Half Marathons (up from 2 in 2005):
And yes, my long-term plan is to run a Full Marathon before I turn 40.
Lonely Genius and Mediocrity
Yesterday I once again watched one, if not my favorite movie: Amadeus. Apart from being a great piece, casted with good actors and framed by eternal music, the film broaches the issue of genius vs. mediocrity.
It was interesting to watch the movie, after I have enjoyed a Stanford business education. The way Mozart behaved, he has probably done everything wrong what you could expect from a person to be effective. Yet, he has become immortal.
My question is: Has he been such a genius
because he ignored all the rules - or
despite? One thing is for sure: for him personally it didn't pay off and didn't have a happy end. Probably, though, that's exactly the tension that unleashes true genial energy.
I personally derive much satisfaction from working in a team. I like to see many people excel, even if the are only regular guys like myself. Achievements are in general a personal, relative thing. I personally pay at least, if not more respect to a handicapped participating in the paralympics than to the son of a real estate magnate who successfully steps into his family's footsteps.
So is Peter Shaeffer's Salieri the real hero? No, this (fictuous) Salieri has achieved something, but then he became destructive. Rather than learning from or co-operating with the genius, he destroys it. My biggest wish during the play was, that - when Salieri takes the notes for the Requiem - that he repents and would become a genuine help, mentor and tutor for Mozart.
As a team they would have certainly been much more effective.
But would the rewards of such a cooperation have Mozart made complacent? Perhaps he would have spent the money on big parties and died of rheumatic fever anyway.
SAP Open 2006 : Andy Murray
Andy Murray, an 18 yrs. old Scottsman, won his first ATP Tour title Sunday and became the youngest champion of the Bay Area stop since 16-year-old Michael Chang in 1988.
The unseeded Murray followed up his victory over third-ranked Andy Roddick in the SAP Open semifinals with a 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (3) triumph over former No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt in Sunday's final before a crowd of 7,107 at HP Pavilion, including Christof, Juan, Peter and Ed.
The picture shows the award of the trophy by Hasso Plattner, chairman of SAP AG.
Thanks to the sponsors, SAP, Hobees (breakfast for the players) and Mercedes-Benz (free parking for Mercedes owners)!
Digital Lifestyle : Status
The sun is shining, things are moving forward greatly.
A good moment to make a short status check on my digital lifestyle progress:
- Web2.0
- Sharing words: My blogging discipline has become much better, I'm quite happy with both my private and my work-related blogging frequency
- Sharing pictures: I provide picture content, partly to the public, with Flickr
- Sharing social bookmarks: del.icio.us
- Mobility
- My Dopod (I love it - it was a great buy!), my laptop and my docking station give me three tiers of mobile computing power
- Whereever I have Broadband Wifi connection to the Internet (at home, at friends' places, in airports or soon - free because sponsored by Google - in the entire city of SF), I am in full control over my digital lifestyle.
Everything else computing related is hosted and outsourced (incl. IT administration)
- Global Access and Networks
- Airline Networks and special airpasses are a great enabler for my digital mobile lifestyle. Here are some numbers:
- Last year I was 123 days on the road (34%), I have visited 22 countries (incl. double-counts) and still spent less than $20K on airfares
In comparison: At APSIS in 2001, I travelled 71 days (19%), I have visited 4 countries abroad, and spent an estimated $60K on airfares - Last year, I got overseas visit to SF from Raphael Leiteritz, Bernd Wiessner, Anou, Carl (2x), Petra & Family, German & Family as well as an all-hands company meeting in December.
- Skype is the voice enabler, that connects me to colleagues, customers, my Mom as well as facilitates company meeting calls, customer conf calls and even our upcoming BOD call.
My skypename is cwittig, but you can also SkypeIn on the numbers +49-89-2351-3122 (in Munich, Germany) and +44-(0)20-7193-2469 (in London, UK)
- Digital Workstyle
- Our company db4objects is designed for the "flat world"
- We're working heavily with our online community of users as an open source company by means of forums, Blogs and many other platforms
- Our staff is distributed over 3, soon 4 continents and communicates by forums, e-mail, wiki and Skype
- We are heavy users of networked buiness systems, esp. Salesforce.com which is entirely integrated with our website and community frontends. All customer interactions are digitally logged, automatically or as an activity entry by our sales and support staff, and is thus immediately available for reference to anybody else in our network of salesforce users around the globe (US, Japan, Hongkong, Germany, Brazil, Argentina)
- We sell and ship our products entirely digitally, worldwide. A webshop for customers with transaction <$10K will complement the current mostly e-mail based approach
- Digital Media
- Photography: My new Dopod helps to catch moch more moments, which I then transfer to Flickr (where I now have 4,703 pictures online), with more and more friends and family joining into my contact network to view them (or share theirs)
- Music: I have started to use my new Dopod as a portable music player, and - given that I never used walkmen before - certainly started to enjoy it. I play music both, transferred from my personal CDs as well as music bought from online stores such as Real's rhapsody.com (since they are our neighbors here in SF, up one block from where we live)
- Movies: Current status is still heavy Netflix user, which is a hybrid of digital and analog lifestyle, but one I can live with for the time being. The service just rocks, you get really good and rare movies to see, and the whole thing is great value for your money! I have bookmarked Movielink, though, to start experimenting with Movies on demand, but then they don't support Firefox...
- News: I read 4 online titles of general news (2 German, 1 British, 1 US) and some 6 IT related titles on a regular basis, often by means of a newsletter subscription
- TV: Never had one, don't miss one. You have to make choices in life.
Back in California, Enjoying it!
After
bitter cold frost in Europe it was great to come back to California, where spring had already started, with Magnolia trees blossoming.
This week's much more chilly, though, but then, it's still sunny.
Google Earth of de Haro
Here's our place on
Google EarthAnother (more horizontal but static) view is
here
Oracle Buying Spree: Open Source Looses its Innocence
Big changes in my industry. My comments on
people4objects.org.
German and French Wine and Music
Cool! Researchers from the University of Leicester did
a little experiment with a display of French and German wines in a supermarket. On alternate days, the store played French, then German music in the background, and sure enough, on French music days 77 percent of the wine sold was French, on German music days 73 percent was German. Now, we are not talking subtle here -- this was cafe accordion versus an oompah band -- but at the end of the checkout line, only one of 44 shoppers mentioned the musical influence, and 86 percent were sure it played no role in their choice.
Royal Connection
100 years ago, in 1906 (estimated), my great grandfather (1st from left) welcomed the King of Bavaria (the one who followed after the death of Ludwig II,
Prinzregent Luitpold - the guy on the right) to his hometown Forchheim (Unterfranken) where he was the local governor.
Frosty Europe... brrr.
Business trip to Europe with family meetings enhanced. Cold! In my birthplace Karlsruhe (picture) meeting with prospective customers but also with Stefan Graefe from
Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos with whom I had done volunteer work in 2003 in Centroamerica.
